While on the campaign trail and the ticket for John McCain in the 2008 US presidential election Sarah Palin quoted Westbrook Pegler, the F.D.R.-era conservative columnist, in her acceptance speech: “We grow good people in our small towns …” And then added, “I grew up with those people. They’re the ones who do some of the hardest work in America, who grow our food and run our factories and fight our wars. They love their country in good times and bad, and they’re always proud of America.”
It’s the American fantasy, that we grow good people in our small town. Perhaps, but not if that town is called Maycomb, Alabama. Maycomb is the small, ‘ancient town’ for the setting of To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, which won the Pulitzer prize for fiction. I reread the book recently. The trial and great injustice committed against the African-American Tom Robinson remains the centrepiece of the novel but it is how the few children of the small town are treated that caught my attention.
The first few chapters of the book are taken up with an exploration of the families in Maycomb. This is done by Scout Finch, who explains to a new teacher which child belongs to which family. Scout believes that just explaining that a boy is from the Cunningham clan is enough to excuse his wild behaviour. They are poor but civilised.
Calpurnia (the African American cook the Finch family couldn’t function without) later tells Scout off for passing comment on how Walter Cunningham eats at the table. Walter was a farming boy and this was one of the reasons he didn’t pass first grade; he had to help his father on the farm. Although Walter knew nothing at school, when it came to farming ‘he was a man.’ Scout said that while Walter piles food on his plate “he and Atticus talked together like two men, to the wonderment of Jem and me.” Atticus had already greeted Walter with a discussion about crops that neither Jem nor Scout could follow. In fairness to the Cunningham’s there is no evidence of Walter being beaten any more than was expected.
The same could not be said about ‘Boo Radley’ the bogeyman of Maycomb. He was incarcerated in his home for at least 25 years first by his father and then by his brother. The town, including Atticus, believe that this is the father’s right and nothing to get upset about. The father was a “foot washing Baptist” who thought everything including flowers growing in a front garden was a sin.
This is how the story goes. Young Boo aka Arthur fell into the wrong crowd as a boy and ended up before the court. The other boys attended an industrial school “and received the best secondary education to be had in the state, one of them eventually worked his way through engineering school at Auburn.” That’s not what happened to Arthur. Mr Radley told the judge he would see to it that Arthur gave no further trouble. Mr Radley was one of the ‘good people’ of this town whose word was his bond so the judge duly released the son into his father’s custody. “The doors of the Radley house were closed on weekdays as well as Sundays, and Mr Radley’s boy was not seen again for fifteen years.”
Totally normal! This father can detain his son in his house for fifteen years and no one bats an eyelid. Ah, the good old days in the Deep South when children were taught right from wrong and kept in line. It is safe to say Mr Radley was not a fan of the old ‘gentle parenting’ that seems to be getting such a hammering from even the liberal media these days. Mr Radley ran a tight ship.
So Arthur was locked undisturbed in his house for 15 years until he eventually cracked. He stabbed his father in the leg with scissors. This meant he was locked up in the courthouse basement. The town’s folk did see fit to intervene at this point because if Arthur remained there he would “die of mould from the damp.” But also (and I sense this is the real concern of the good people of small town Maycomb) “Boo could not live forever on the bounty of the county.”
So back went Boo to the Radley house. Scout tells us, “Nobody knew what form of intimidation Mr Radley employed to keep Boo out of sight, but Jem figured that Mr Radley kept him chained to the bed most of the time. Atticus said no, it wasn’t that sort of thing, that there were other ways of making people into ghosts.” There certainly are in those small towns where the adults can abuse their children and no one seems to care.
When Mr Radley the father eventually dies Calpurnia comments “there goes the meanest man ever God blew breath into.” Sadly for Boo Mr Radley senior was replaced by Mr Radley junior the elder brother. Boo’s virtual imprisonment continues for another 10 years. When he leaves the Finch children some small gifts in the knot of the tree, his brother shuts this down by filling it with cement. ‘We build good people in our small town.’
Indeed, by the time Boo emerges to save the life of the Finch children he has “sickly white hands that had never seen the sun.” Atticus moves from the sitting room to the porch as the light is dimmer. “Boo would feel more comfortable in the dark.”
If Boo Radley was imprisoned in his home, with no objection by a single person, not the school, not the good white women, not even Atticus, then the Ewell children ran wild. In fact, no one in the small town knew exactly how many children were in the Ewell family. They attended school the first day of every year and then were allowed to stay at home. Not that it was much of a home. “The tribe of which Burris Ewell and his brethren consisted had lived on the same plot of earth behind the Maycomb dump, and had thrived on county welfare money for three generations.”
Tom Robinson had the misfortune of having to walk past the Ewell plot every day. The eldest Ewell, Mayella Violet Ewell who was 19 years old, kept a good eye on Tom Robinson. She, like so many eldest daughters before her, was left to ‘raise’ the Ewell children because her mother had died and her father drank away the welfare check. When Atticus cross examines her at the trial of Tom Robinson whom she has accused of rape, a capital crime, it occurs to Scout that Mayella “must have been the loneliest person in the world. She was even lonelier than Boo Radley, who had not been out of the house in twenty – five years.”
Mayella lived on the edge of Maycomb, where none of the upright ladies thought to visit or drop in or check on the children. She was just, white trash. In fact Mayella’s situation was so bad even Tom Robinson felt sorry for her – something he is mocked for by the prosecution, “you felt sorry for her” he sneered. How could this be, when Tom was a Negro, always and at all times the lowest on the ladder, below even ‘the white trash?’
(Above. Atticus Finch cross – examines Mayella Violet Ewell in the 1962 movie To Kill a Mockingbird. Scout believes she must have been the loneliest person in the world. Living in Maycomb, she surely was.)
It is this loneliness that ensnares Tom Robinson. In a desperate attempt for human affection Mayella plots to seduce Tom Robinson, asking him into the house to help with a chore having sent the children for ice-cream with money she had saved up for months. Robinson explains that Mayella tried to kiss her, “she said she never kissed a grown man before” and she might as well kiss him. “She says what her papa do to her don’t count.” So Mayella is not only neglected but abused by her father. When Mr Ewell interrupts her attempts to seduce Robinson, he beats her mercilessly and it is implied that he rapes her. Whether this is the first time, we do not know.
That’s the fictional town of Maycomb. The kind of town that is governed by an honour and shame culture, where concepts like honour and duty were policed closely. And nothing was more closely protected than the ‘honour’ of the white woman, even that of a young 19 year old girl who was abused by her father and neglected and abandoned by the good people of Maycomb. It is only when the black man allegedly violates her that the town sits up and takes notice. They didn’t care what went on in the Ewell shack up until that point.
Maycomb was a fictional town in Alabama but Harper Lee drew heavily from her childhood in Monroeville, Alabama when writing the book. It would be nice to think things have changed and improved somewhat but I wouldn’t bank on it.